July 23, 2011, 1:33PM

I decided to check out the “Persia to Ponies” session on Saturday, July 23, morning at Tales of the Cocktail mainly because the popularity of the mint julep – a cocktail so identified with American South -- has always been a bit of a mystery to me. Try as I might, I have trouble warming up to this drink... Full story »

July 22, 2011, 5:10PM

Here are just a few of the facts I learned at this afternoon's highly entertaining and informative panel on "Who's Your Daddy? A Mai Tai Paternity Test," led by the tiki historian Jeff "Beachbum" Berry: *The Zombie was the Cosmopolitan of its day. The Zombie was the drink that put tiki on the map. *In 1959 the Mai Tai knocked the Zombie... Full story »

July 22, 2011, 4:32PM

At Friday's Tales of the Cocktail panel on the proliferation of America's craft distillers, moderator Matt Rowley told the crowd that there are now distilleries in every state but Oklahoma and Alabama. A guy wearing an Arkansas T-shirt was sitting across the aisle from me. I started to wonder. Yes, he's a distiller. Phil Brandon is the only craft distiller in... Full story »

•
'Hair of the dog' still a popular remedy for over-exuberant revelers
Long before Paris Hilton debased the concept of the "celebutante," Brenda Diana Duff Frazier was a glamorous rich girl famous for going to parties and not much else. And the party she was most celebrated for was her own -- a 1938 "coming out" party at the Ritz-Carlton in New York that was breathlessly chronicled in newspapers the world...